1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of digital media display advertising. In particular, the present invention relates to the field of optimizing publisher revenue in server or supply-side platforms (SSPs) that enable publishers to manage their desktop and mobile advertising impression inventory and maximize revenue from digital media by providing an integrated architecture for advertising allocations by implementing enhanced features in supply-side platforms that fuse multiple demand channels and real-time bidding.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital advertising involves the presentation of display or mobile advertisements (e.g., banner ads, images, text, and/or hyperlinks of various shapes and sizes) embedded into web pages or mobile applications that are rendered and displayed to Internet users. For example, when an Internet user enters a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into the address bar of a browser application and directs the browser application to request the web page corresponding with the URL, the web page that is rendered and displayed to the user may include one or more display advertisements. Although the goal of displaying advertisements may vary from one advertisement campaign to the next, many advertisement campaigns are planned with the objective of driving traffic to a website of the advertiser. For example, the owners of a small online business having a web-based retail store for selling tennis equipment (e.g., tennis racquets, balls, clothes and shoes) may desire to embed display advertisements in the web pages of a web-based tennis magazine or blog, with the hope that the readers of the tennis magazine or blog will view and select the ads for the online tennis store, and ultimately conclude a transaction with the web-based tennis store. Similarly, the content publisher (e.g., the operator of the web-based tennis magazine or blog) may desire to generate revenue by offering advertisement space on web pages to advertisers for the display of their advertisements.
There are a variety of existing methods and mechanisms by which content publishers can make their ad spaces available to advertisers for purchasing, and by which advertisers find and purchase the advertisement spaces of content publishers. One way is through direct negotiation. For instance, an advertiser may directly approach a content publisher with a request to purchase advertisement space in that content publisher's web pages or mobile applications. Another way that a content publisher may offer advertisement space for sale is through an advertisement network or an advertisement exchange. Advertisement networks and advertisement exchanges are companies that connect content publishers with advertisers who desire to have advertisements embedded in the content of other content publishers. Advertisement networks and advertisement exchanges operate in a variety of different ways. More and more, given the complexity of the operations involved, advertisement networks and advertisement exchanges have become highly automated such that both the content publisher and advertiser can conclude transactions via web-based interfaces and automated auctions, without additional personal interaction.
One problem that content publishers face with existing methods and mechanisms that are used to offer advertisement spaces to advertisers is the limited audience of potential advertisers that can be reached through any particular ad network or advertisement exchange. For example, some advertisers may work with only one advertisement or ad network. Therefore, unless a content publisher is working with that particular ad network, the content publisher will not have access to those advertisers. Consequently, in addition to directly negotiating with one or more advertisers, a content publisher may be required to utilize multiple advertisement networks and/or advertisement exchanges to find the advertisers that are willing to purchase the content publisher's inventory of ad spaces. This typically requires that the content publisher establish several user accounts, and become familiar with the various interfaces, policies and procedures of the several ad networks and/or ad exchanges that the content publisher utilizes. Furthermore, the content publisher will be required to retrieve and analyze performance reports, often in varying formats for each ad network and/or ad exchange with which the content publisher is using.
Another problem that content publishers frequently encounter is finding the optimum or best price at which to offer ad spaces to advertisers. For instance, when a content publisher is using a single ad network, the advertisers participating in that ad network may not accurately represent the overall market (specifically, the demand in the broader market) for the offered ad space. Therefore, if a content publisher sets the price for an ad space too low, the content publisher will not realize the fair market value of the ad space. Even in scenarios where the ad network or ad exchange uses an auction system, if the publisher's reserve price is set too low, the limited number of advertisers in any given ad network or ad exchange are not likely to bid the price up to the fair market value, and thus the content publisher is not likely to realize the fair market value of the ad spaces. Consequently, content publishers are left with the burden of adjusting the price at which their ad spaces are being offered on multiple ad networks and/or ad exchanges, in an effort to find the optimal price. This of course is not an easy task, as the optimal price is likely to change over time, as demand changes and economic conditions change.
In online advertising environments, several technology platforms exist to facilitate efficient transactions including ad exchanges, which are centralized platforms for aggregating the impressions offered across multiple ad networks and matching them, based on myriad criteria (advertiser's target, budget, and placement requirements) with the most appropriate advertisements. Real time bidding (“RTB”) platforms facilitate a dynamic auction process where each impression is bid for in real time to facilitate cost efficiency, higher performance, and more accurate targeting and measurement of advertisement inventory etc. Demand-side platforms (“DSP”) provide buyers with direct access for real time bidding to multiple sources of inventory. DSP platforms may be operated by agencies or large advertisers who are the buyers. Publishers use yield management techniques to increase advertisement revenue. This typically involves managing multiple networks. Supply-side platforms (“SSPs”) exist that use the data generated from bidding of impressions to enable publishers to increase the value of their inventory, manage their advertising impression inventory and maximize revenue from digital media. Such platforms offer an efficient, automated, and secure way to access different sources of advertising income that are available and provide insights into the various revenue streams and audiences. More and more, large web publishers of the world use a supply-side platform to automate and optimize selling their online media space.
In a typical adverting scenario, a SSP on the publisher side interfaces with an ad exchange, which in turn interfaces with a demand-side platform (DSP) on the advertiser side. This type of system allows advertisers to provide online advertising before a selected target audience. Often real-time bidding (RTB) mechanisms are used to complete DSP transactions.
In many instances, information is often transferred between an advertisement (“ad”) server and a user's web browser. The primary transaction is an “ad request,” which is typically composed of two parts: (1) the request, by which a message containing information relevant for advertisement selection is composed and sent to the advertisement server and (2) the response, by which the advertisement server returns the selected advertisements back to the client or consumer.
Advertisement requests are typically initiated or informed, at least in a desktop environment, by a snippet of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) on a web page called an “ad tag.” In mobile technologies, other types of code may be used for this purpose. The contents of an ad tag may include placeholder elements, fallback images, and scripts that trigger ad requests. An ad tag script is configured to call into a local JavaScript file, referred to here as a “tag library.” The tag library is responsible for constructing and issuing advertisement requests, handling advertisement responses, and displaying returned advertisements.
A returned advertisement is often in the form of an arbitrary string of HTML called a “creative.” The tag library displays the advertisement by adding the creative to the current web page in the appropriate location. In the simplest case, the creative contains an image or “Flash” element representing what is ultimately visible to the user on his or her user device as the advertisement. In some instances, the creative may also represent the HTML for a third-party advertisement (ad) tag. The method described in this application is particular to scenarios where an advertisement server returns third-party tags. When third-party tags are added to the page, the entire advertisement request process is repeated under the control of the third party.
In instances when a creative is added to the web page, a notification otherwise referred to as the impression is sent back to the advertisement server to confirm that the advertisement has been displayed. It should be recognized that the term impression also generally refers to the event in which a user views a slot into which an advertisement can be served, along with any contextual information that could inform the advertisement selection process. In such scenarios, impressions are what advertisers are ultimately interested in purchasing from web publishers.
Digital advertising supply, or “inventory,” refers to the impressions that website publishers or mobile application developers have made available for advertisers to purchase. Impressions are eventually associated with advertisement units, which are the physical spaces on web pages reserved for displaying advertisements. Traditionally, inventory has been categorized into groups. As one example, inventory may be referred to as “Premium Inventory,” which represents impressions that are sold directly to advertisers who guarantee that they would pay a fixed price for a certain quantity. These may be associated with advertisement units that can be viewed without user scrolling or alternatively, with spaces that exist on web pages with heavy traffic. Although typically a smaller percentage of the inventory available, premium inventory is more valuable to advertisers because of its higher exposure to users.
Yet another type of inventory is “Remnant Inventory,” which represents the remaining impressions that have not been sold directly to buyers. These impressions may be associated with less visible, lower traffic advertisement units that are naturally less valuable to advertisers because of low exposure to users. Because the amount of remnant inventory that is available is typically much greater than that of premium inventory, a major portion of it is often remains unsold. Alternatively, some publishers have direct relationships with advertisers and others go through intermediaries.
Ad networks have historically aggregated remnant inventory and matched it with advertiser demand. Ad networks provide publishers with ad tags that can be incorporated into their web pages as described above. Such tags are associated with different compensation methods depending on the type of inventory targeted. For remnant inventory, the most common method is “Cost per Mille,” or CPM, which is the price the ad network agrees to pay for every 1,000 impressions an ad receives. Even with ad network tags, a given impression is often unable to find a suitable ad. In such instances, the ad network may return a predetermined value in place of an advertisement. This value is often provided by the end user (e.g., a publisher's operations person) when requesting a tag from the ad network, and may be in the form of HTML, JavaScript, or another type of ad tag. The capability to return this predetermined value when an advertisement cannot be found is referred to in the industry as a “defaulting tag.” If no default value has been configured, no advertisement is shown in the advertisement unit slot, but this is acceptable behavior because of the lower priority for filling remnant inventory.
It should be recognized that defaulting ad tags are different from “fill-all” tags, which guarantee the task of serving an ad, but often at a much lower CPM. In many instances, “fill-all” tags are often used as the default value for defaulting tags. Two features of defaulting ad tags are relevant to understanding the process disclosed here. A first feature is that defaults are only determined at render-time. The anatomy of a defaulting tag is such that the event of a default can only be determined when the tag is attempted in a web browser. This is because advertisement selection is often based on contextual information such as HTTP cookies, the content of the web page, and the size of the user's screen. Yet another feature is that an effective CPM must be calculated. Ad networks that default only pay for an impression if an advertisement is found and no default was required. However the CPM for a possibly defaulting tag does not take into account the rate at which it defaults, i.e., there is no differentiation in value between two tags with the same CPM that default at very different rates. Thus, the effective CPM of a defaulting tag or in other words, a true value of the defaulting tag may only be determined by keeping a running measurement of its default rate. A natural consequence of using defaulting ad tags is that a portion of publisher inventory either goes unsold or is sold at a much lower price.
Traditional SSPs were designed before real-time buying or bidding (RTB) emerged; hence these platforms often add real-time bidding (“RTB”) demand to other demand sources, such as DSPs or ad networks, as an afterthought. Because the demand channels are not fully integrated with the core technology of such traditional SSPs, they implement an “either-or” decisioning approach to buyer selection. When impressions become available, the traditional SSP must choose upfront whether to send the impression to network buyers or to solicit buyers in the real-time auction. This inefficiency has minimized competition and lowered the true value of impressions, substantially shrinking publisher revenue, especially given the constant regularity with which networks default on an impression, potentially leaving no alternative but to serve a house advertisement, public service announcements or other very low CPM 100% fill network.
Thus, traditional SSPs have a 1) fractured demand, that is, no competition from network and RTB demand; 2) impression loss, that is negative results from network defaults and advertisement server hops; 3) higher latency due to impressions being sent outside to third party systems; 4) high discrepancy rates, because they offer inventory to multiple demand sources, and must call several ad servers. When filling an impression, the many SSPs choose at the outset whether to send the impression to an advertisement network or RTB source as they cannot access both channels simultaneously. Thus, traditional SSPs have conventionally taken an “either/or” approach. If an impression is sent to an advertisement network and the network defaults (or passes the impression back), the impression cannot be offered to an RTB buyer.